


Spelled Out

by chetta



Series: Irondad Bingo 2019 [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Irondad Bingo 2019, Prompt Fill, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, alien attack, because of course, de-powered peter, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 07:17:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18751636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chetta/pseuds/chetta
Summary: Peter loses his abilities after being hit with some next level magic on patrol. Too bad Spider-man's got stuff to do.(namely, fighting off alien invaders with the rest of the team)





	Spelled Out

**Author's Note:**

> For the trope: Losing Powers. Did I get a little carried away with this one? maybe so...

It’s only once he wakes up and his vision has gone all fuzzy that Peter realizes that maybe that wizard guy he’d tangled with last night on patrol _had_ been legit. 

Cursing, he slings his legs over the side of his bed and rubs at his tired eyes until he sees stars. He swears again, louder this time, once he opens them only for things to be just as blurry as before. “Shit. Shit shit shit.”

What kind of curse was this supposed to be? Slightly subpar vision for the rest of eternity? Of course Peter had to be the one to get stuck with the one NYC wizard whose roster only included spells which were meant to irritate the _shit_ out of their victims. 

May’s harried voice carries from the kitchen, jolting him from his panic. “Pete? You’re gonna have to get a move on if you don’t want to miss class.” 

His eyes widen as he catches a glance of the time. 7:30? He hadn’t even heard his alarm go off. “Yeah, I’m coming!” he calls before stumbling as he tries to stand. 

“Okay, something’s definitely wrong.” It’s more than a little obvious at this point, but Peter still feels like it should be said. 

So he’s having trouble seeing and walking properly—he only manages to take a few steps before he has to grab onto his desk for support. Pulling up the legs of his sweatpants, Peter checks for any sort of bruises or lacerations that he could have missed the night before. But everything looks normal, the only difference being the fact that every movement feels like he’s running a marathon. He grabs at the chair—attempting to pull it away from his desk so he can just rest for a second—but the stupid thing refuses to move. 

It’s strange, he considers for a moment, the last time he remembers feeling like this was back when—

Peter blinks, eyes wide. “No way,” he says to his reflection, because that just can’t be right. 

A terrifying thought strikes him. The exhaustion, the decreased strength, the trouble seeing—they could all be explained by one thing: he doesn’t have his powers anymore; the magician took away _his powers._

“No. No no no. No way,” he mutters to himself. Digging through his desk drawer, Peter’s hands grasp for the little box which he hasn’t had use for in months. He finds it crammed behind a pair of prototype web shooters, the hinges creaky with disuse. 

He slides on the prescription-heavy frames and the room snaps back into perfect focus. 

_No way._

“Peter? Honey, I’m leaving now—did you want a ride?” May peeks her head into the room. When she sees the glasses, her eyes narrow. “What’re you doing with those?”

He pulls them off and tries to pretend that May hasn’t just become a blob of assorted colours. “Uhh. Just—I’m just, taking these for a project. Wanted to try them on for a second.” 

“Okay,” she says, and Peter can tell that she’s not really looking at him, her eyes trained on his bedside clock. It’s probably the only thing that saves him from her seeing straight through his feeble lie. “Well, I hope everything goes well with the project. I’m off now since I guess you’re not ready to go yet. Or I can wait a couple more minutes if you want...”

“No, don’t worry about it, May. I’ll swing downtown—it won’t even take 15 minutes.”

He can tell her mouth is pinched even without being able to see it. “Alright. No hero-ing around this morning though, okay? You’ve got that training thing tonight and I promised Tony that you’d be there on time and in one piece.” 

“Yeah, so the Avengers can kick the crap out of me.” 

“Probably.” She checks her watch again. “I have to get going, but I’ll see you tonight, okay? Love you.” 

“Love you too, May,” he calls at her retreating back. 

Peter waits until he can hear the door close (it’s quieter now—why hadn’t he realized how quiet everything had gotten?) before he slips the glasses back on. There’s no way she’d let him go to the Compound tonight if she knew that he’s now just essentially a kid running around in millions of dollars worth of spandex. They’ll probably come back by then, he justifies to himself. There’s no way the wizard’s spell would have taken them away for good. 

Right? 

It’ll be fine. He tells himself this until he almost believes it, stuffing a change of clothes into his backpack and stepping into his suit. 

“Everything will be fine—everything is fine,” he repeats as he stares down the side of his building a couple of minutes later. It’s only 6 stories, Peter’s fallen from heights that make this drop look like a couple of steps down, but he’s suddenly hyper aware of the fact that he’s now got no spidey-sense or healing factor to speak of whatsoever. 

A fall from this height and he’s done. Plain and simple. 

And to add insult to injury he still can’t freaking see—his glasses stashed neatly in the inside pocket of his backpack. 

_Is something the matter, Peter? Your vitals are within an unusual range today._

“No, KAREN. I’m fine, don’t worry about me.” He takes a bracing breath and lines up a shot. “I got this—I’m Spider-man.” 

With that, he lets himself fall forward into the air, waiting a second before pushing down on a web shooter. The line catches the side of the opposite building and his momentum shifts. It’s only once he lets go of the web to grab onto a new one that he realizes his eyes had been closed the entire time. 

The trip takes longer than it normally does. He keeps it simple, no fancy flips or tricks, no momentum-gaining big drops. Web to web. Simple as that. 

Swinging feels different like this, but for the longest time Peter can’t figure out why. Sure, he’s more tired and the pressure feels more than a little uncomfortable on his shoulders, but that doesn’t explain the rush of fear that flood his stomach every time he lets go of a line. 

He’s only a couple more minutes from the school now—there’s an alley a couple of blocks away that’s normally deserted at this time of the morning. His arm reaches out for another shot and Peter feels the web catch the facade of a tall brownstone. But then, before he even realizes it’s happening, Peter’s falling. 

There’s no time for him to try and roll into the impact, no time to even register why he’s suddenly started losing altitude. One second he’s in the air and the next he’s on the ground and he can’t breathe. 

Peter rolls onto his side, pain ratcheting up the entire left half of his body. He pulls in deep gulps of air, but it feels like his lungs have stopped working altogether. 

_Peter. My sensors indicate possible contusions to your left side._

“Y-yeah. That would make sense,” he grits out between clenched teeth. He wants to pull off his suit and check, but even the thought of moving is too much right now. “How did—how did I fall?”

KAREN is silent for a few moments. _My sensors indicate no flaws in your webbing._

He cranes his neck. “Then how—?” There’s a chunk of the building lying only a few feet from his head, a silky strand of webbing still attached to one end. 

_This fall, in addition to the drop in your vitals today, signals that you may be experiencing some form of illness. My programming dictates that I—_

“No, KAREN, don’t call Mr. Stark. It was just a little fall. You’ve seen me get up after worse, I’ll be fine.” He tries to inject as much confidence into the words as possible, despite the fact that he’s still curled into the fetal position in some strange alleyway on a Wednesday morning. 

_Yes, this does fall within my preset parameters of acceptable risk._

He lets out a sigh of relief. The last thing he needs is Tony poking his nose into this when he’s fine. “Yup. Thanks, KAREN,” he says, flinching when the words send another twinge of pain through his side. He’s perfectly fine.

Peter scrapes himself off the ground and starts rummaging around in his backpack. Lucky he had it with him to take some of the impact, or else this fall might not have been something he could have walked away from. He realizes this with a distant kind of dread, the same as when a perp misses a killing blow by mere inches. 

It takes some work to coax his protesting arms and legs into his civvies (he gives up entirely on trying to get the suit off), but he manages to dust himself off and walk the rest of the way without accidentally almost dying again. 

The bell’s already rung by the time he makes it to school, so he slips in with the last few stragglers before the morning announcements come on. Ned doesn’t look up from his phone when he drops into the empty seat next to him, giving an absentminded little wave as he scrolls. However, he does look up when Peter slips on his glasses. 

“Thought you didn’t need those anymore?” 

“I mean, I don’t,” Peter says, only now realizing how suspicious it probably looks to someone who knows that Peter Parker didn’t suddenly stop wearing glasses because he just finally bought some contacts. “I just—I’m just…”

There’s a lie on the tip of his tongue, but Ned’s eyes are earnest and Peter’s side just hurts _so much._

“I lost my powers.” 

His mouth drops open. _“What? How?!”_

“Shhhhhh! There was this wizard guy--”

Ned’s eyes go even wider, if possible. “You got cursed?!”

“Only a little bit,” he protests. “But that’s not the point. Now I can’t see properly, and I can’t swing, or punch things, and I fell on my way here because I thought I could make it in my suit.” 

Peter’s throat is tight. He’d thought he could do this—but what if he can’t be Spider-man anymore? What if his powers never come back?

“You fell? Are you okay?”

Peter tries to take stock of his injuries. The pain in his arm and leg have dulled, but his chest still feels like it’s being kicked in repeatedly by the Hulk. “I don’t know. They’re fine, but I don’t know how long they’ll take to heal now.”

“You’ve got to tell Mr. Stark about this.”

“No way—”

“You could be in serious danger.”

“Ned—”

“Especially if you’re still doing that Avengers training thing today.” 

“I am,” Peter says firmly, leaving as little room as he can in his voice for disagreement. “We’ve been planning this for weeks—Rogers and Barnes had to fly in from Russia for it—I can’t back out now.”

Ned’s expression still doesn’t change.

The teacher calls for their attention at the front of the class and the conversation dies down around them. Peter turns towards the board, but he can feel the way Ned’s eyes keep moving back towards him. 

“It’s just temporary. They’ll come back,” he insists under his breath, because the only alternative is accepting that maybe now he’ll have to hang up the tights for good. 

There’s a light tap on his arm and Ned slides a scrap of paper onto his desk. _Promise me you’ll tell Mr. Stark,_ the note reads. 

Peter sighs. Ned’s turned his face back towards their lesson, but Peter can still read the fearful tension in his shoulders. 

_I promise,_ he writes back and tries not to feel like a liar.

~

He climbs into the backseat of the car with little fanfare, waving hello to Happy before busying himself with the passing traffic.

“That’s it?” Happy asks from the front seat. “No ‘hi, Happy’, no ‘thanks for coming to pick me up, Happy’?”

Peter tries for the best approximation of a smile that he can manage. “Hey, Happy.”

They fall silent for a few moments, the greeting only managing to exacerbate Happy’s scrutiny. “Say, what’s with the fancy new specs?”

Peter feeds him the same line he’s been giving everyone today. “I uh, lost my contacts.” He crosses his fingers in his pockets and prays that Happy’s has no idea about any of the physical ramifications of his spider-powers. 

The answer seems good enough to fool Happy. “You feeling okay, kid?”

“Yeah,” Peter lies. He feels like he’s been doing that a lot today. “Just tired. Think you can wake me up when we get there?” 

“Sure thing.” 

It’s over an hour drive to the Compound—way too much time for Happy to figure out that something’s up and continue picking at it. So Peter closes his eyes and leans his head against the window. At least this way he won’t be able to ask any more questions. 

One of the car’s wheels hits a bump and Peter has to bite down on the whimper which tries to escape from his throat. 

He’d gone to the bathroom during lunch to try survey the damage, stripping off his shirt and the top part of his suit once he was sure the room was empty. The entire left side of his chest had looked like some sort of gruesome impressionist painting, blues, blacks, and greens, all overlapping in a twisted kaleidoscope of colour. The patch had started all the way up at his armpit and continued downwards until it disappeared into the fabric bunched up at his waist, warm to the touch and absolutely radiating pain. 

Peter has no idea how far down it goes, whether it stops at his legs or continues all the way down to his feet. 

He’s a little too scared to check and see. 

They arrive at the Compound just as the pain settles down into acceptable levels. Peter lets Happy get out of the car and come around to shake his shoulder. He tries not to flinch as Happy’s grip presses down on an especially vivid bruise. 

“We’re here, kid.”

Peter makes a show of waking up—yawning, stretching his arms above his head as high as he can tolerate—before grabbing his backpack and heading towards the entrance. 

“Thanks, Happy,” he tosses over his shoulder. Peter’s only made it a few steps into the building before he sees what looks like the totality of the Avengers making their way towards him. 

Cap and Falcon are leading the charge, both of them suited up and ready for combat.

“Hey, guys. What’s going on?” He looks at Steve. “Nice to see you again, Cap.”

The patriot tips his head. “Queens.” 

Natasha elbows her way past Sam, stopping to pat Peter once on the head before he continues past them. “Let’s get a move on, guys. Pete, you staying or going?”

“Going where? I thought we were training tonight?” 

Steve fiddles with the strap on his shield. “Change of plans. Someone’s got an interspace portal set up in Jersey that we’ve got to take care of first.”

He looks past Steve for a moment, catching the glint of Bucky’s metal arm and the telltale red glow of Wanda’s powers. “You’re taking the whole team?”

“We’ve got no idea what’s on the other side,” Cap says with a shrug. 

“Can I come?” Peter knows as soon as the words come out of his mouth that the most likely answer is—

“Hell no.” Tony sweeps into the room with all the subtlety of a rock concert, armour already half-assembled around him. He points to Peter. “You’re staying here with Bruce and playing checkers.” 

His face falls. “But—”

“Nuh-uh. We’re not playing this game today, Parker. Team?” He gestures all of them towards where the Quinjet is parked on the tarmac. 

“Tony,” Steve starts, tone sympathetic. “We did tell the kid he’d be doing some hands-on training today. It’s not gonna get more hands-on than this.” 

Rhodey chimes in from the other end of the room. “Yeah, come on, Tones. Let the kid live a little.”

“Yeah, come on, Mr. Stark,” Peter chimes in hopefully, but backs down after the glare Tony directs his way.

Indecision plays over Mr. Stark’s face, his perpetual need for Peter to be away from the action in a desperate battle with his desire to get Peter properly trained asap. 

Mr. Stark takes a bracing breath. “If I let you come—big _if—”_ He pokes Peter in the chest. “You have to promise that you will take this mission as a training exercise—”

Peter doesn’t hesitate. “I promise.”

“—that means no unnecessary risks and no close quarters combat. Do you hear me? Stay out of the action and web them up. Observe.”

“I can do that. I swear, I’ll be good, I’ll follow orders.” 

Tony pauses for a second, weighing Peter’s sincerity. His eyes snap between him and Cap. “Fine.” 

Peter throws his hands up. “Yes!” Without thinking, he throws his arms around Tony’s shoulders. “Thank you, Mr. Stark.”

The man tenses up, but a gauntleted hand eventually comes down to pat Peter on the back. “Yeah, yeah, kid. Thank me later.” 

“Alright, Avengers—let’s go!” 

The team starts drifting in the direction of the Quinjet. Peter can’t believe it, he’s going on an Avengers mission. Where there will be a possible extraterrestrial encounter. He’s so excited he could sing. 

“Cute glasses, Peter,” Wanda says as she walks by, her nails clicking as she taps one of the rims. 

Peter freezes. He’d almost forgotten—the magician, the curse, the powers. “Thanks, Wanda.” He shoots her a smile, all the while his chest feels like it’s sunk somewhere past his feet.

He can’t fight like this. He’d only barely survived a 10-foot fall today onto concrete—there’s no way he’ll be able to go out and fight aliens without getting overpowered.

Thank God Tony hadn’t noticed the glasses earlier, probably too caught up in pre-battle prep to realize that Peter shouldn’t have needed them anymore.

“You coming, Pete? Magic School Bus ain’t gonna wait up for long.” Tony’s waiting up by the open doors, brows furrowed and expression curious. 

Peter’s so close to telling him, then. So close to calling off the whole thing. Instead, he takes off his glasses and tucks them into the pocket of his jeans. 

“Way ahead of you, Mr. Stark. Hey, do you think I’ll get to punch any aliens today? Punching an alien’s like, the number four thing on my bucket list.”

Mr. Stark claps him soundly on the shoulder as he passes. The white-hot flash of pain it inspires is almost enough to knock Peter over. “Don’t get your hopes up,” he tells him. There’s a line between Tony’s eyes that still hasn’t gone away yet. “Hey, kid, are you—?”

“I’ll race you to the jet,” Peter interrupts, mostly because he knows that Tony won’t chase him and he needs this conversation to be over, like, 10 minutes ago. He takes off before Tony can say anything else, wading through the military-calibre equipment and plopping down into a seat between Thor and Bucky just as the ship takes off. 

Thor’s expression lights up when he catches sight of him. “Young man of spiders! Finally ready to join us in glorious battle?”

Peter opens his mouth to respond, but not before Tony can interject. “Hold your horses, Point Break—kid’s not doing battle. Observer status only.” He fixes Peter with a pointed look. 

“Nevertheless.” He picks up Mjolnir where it’s been resting against his leg. “I shall be more than pleased to know that he is watching my back.” 

“Uh, thanks.” Not that Peter would be able to do much more than watch anyways. He can shoot webs, barely even swing, but that’s about it. 

The ride to Jersey is short and quiet. The tensions between the two sides of the Accords feud have finally abated enough for silences to get closer to something approaching ‘comfortable’, so there is less of a need for Peter to try and fill the silence than in the past. He spends the ride with his eyes closed and head tilted back—he’d forgotten how badly he used to get carsick before the bite, but he’s having trouble forgetting it now. 

Once Cap begins discussing mission parameters and roles, Peter moves towards the back of the plane. His plan is to just wait the battle out somehow, web up a few aliens from a rooftop if things get a little hairy. That way Tony will never even need to know and things can go back to normal—easy peasy. 

He shucks off his shirt and jeans, kicking them to the corner of the ship and dropping his bag on top of them. He’s wringing his mask between his hands when a hand touches his shoulder and he starts, whipping around. 

Mr. Stark holds his hands up in surrender. “Woah there, never been able to sneak up on you like that before—are you sure you’re okay?”

There’s concern written into Tony’s features and Peter feels bad for lying to him. “Yeah. Never better.” 

“Good.” Eyes roving over Peter’s face like he’s searching for something, Tony’s mouth presses into a thin white line. “Be careful out there, alright?” 

“Of course. Peanut gallery privileges only.”

Anxiety appeased for the time being, Tony ruffles his hair before moving towards the Quinjet doors. The rest of the team lines up behind him and Peter tugs on his mask before moving towards the back of the group.

Cap turns towards everyone. “Alright, team. Let’s shut this down as quickly as we can. Keep injuries to a minimum please, I don’t want to have to scrape anyone off of the pavement again.”

Someone coughs. _“Sam.”_

“That was one time, man!”

The muted laughter of the team is drowned out as the bay doors open, flooding the ship with sharp mechanical sounds and the scared yells of civilians. 

Everyone’s spread out in the open before Peter even really has a chance to take the scene in. He slips out of the Quinjet as the doors start closing and takes position near the corner of the building they’d landed on. Thank god Clint had touched down here and not on the street—Peter hadn’t been looking forward to trying to web his way up without being able to stick to things. 

_Peter, Mr. Stark is attempting to connect you to the team’s main comms channel._

The battle looks indistinct from here, it’s difficult to make anything out without his glasses. He’ll need to comms if he wants to have any idea of what’s going on. “Patch them through, KAREN.” 

Immediately, his ears are assaulted by the sounds of 10 adults all yelling and fighting at once. 

“Portal’s on your left, Cap,” someone says, Peter’s not sure who. “We need someone to bottleneck them there before any more of them can spread out and get to civilians. War machine, you got eyes on the scene?”

Rhodey’s response comes in seconds. “There are a couple dozen stragglers around the periphery, but most of these bastards are concentrated around the origin point.” 

“Hey, Rhodes, watch your language—young ears and all that.” That’s Tony’s voice--Peter would be hard-pressed not to recognize it after all these months. 

He realizes belatedly who it is they’re talking about. “You’ve literally said worse with me right there, Mr. Stark.” 

“Do as I say, not as I do.” The Iron Man suit cuts low, repulsors firing on the writhing grey-greenish masses. It suddenly occurs to Peter that those blurry masses are actual living, breathing _aliens,_ and he’s caught somewhere between exhilaration and existential terror. 

“I’m taking bottleneck with Wanda,” Nat says and Peter can just barely make her out on the street below, shoving her fists and feet into any soft tissue she can find. “Someone look out for whatever device is keeping this thing open.” 

Cap sounds out of breath, wherever he is. “That’s assuming it’s not on their side.” 

“If it is on the wrong side of the portal, I’m calling dibs on _not_ going through this one. I’ve done my time,” Tony pipes up. He’s the easiest for Peter to see on the battlefield, his vibrant armour making him the most recognizable by far. 

“Spider-man, can you see anything from your vantage point?”

Peter’s face flushes. He can barely tell where everyone is, nevermind pick out a device among the hundred moving bodies on the ground. “Nothing from up here.”

He feels useless, out of place. He can’t do anything without his powers.

“Pete, there are some civilians near where you’re perched with a few E.T.s getting a little close for comfort.”

“I’m on it.” He takes position and aims his web shooters at what looks like the aliens. They’re all sort of mushy-looking from this angle, essentially big piles of disgusting looking sludge with plasma guns. 

The crowd of civilians quickly dissipates once the aliens have been taken down. Peter sets his sights on the rest of the battle, letting the other Avengers corral groups of them within range of his web shooters so that he can incapacitate them. 

“Found the device,” Hawkeye interjects over the regular commotion of the comms. “No idea how it works, though. Stark, I’m gonna need your help with this one.” 

“Be there in a sec, dearest.” Tony touches down just out of range of Peter’s shooters, where if Peter strains he can just about make out Hawkeye crouching over something. 

“Alright, guys, I’m stripping down for this, I can’t see what I’m doing in the armour,” Tony says.

Someone laughs. “Dinner and a show—perfect.”

“Bucky, Spider-man, watch Stark’s back. He’s totally exposed without the armour.”

“Gotcha, Steve.”

“Copy that, Cap.” Peter doesn’t have to be told twice. He moves as close as he can to Mr. Stark without falling off of the roof and webs up anything he thinks is getting too close. 

After a few minutes of this, Mr. Stark still hasn’t shut off the device and Peter’s eyes are beginning to ache with the effort of trying to focus. 

“You have an ETA on that thing, Mr. Stark?”

“Pipe down, kiddo, gotta concentrate.”

Peter raises his web shooters again and tries to ignore how badly his arms are shaking. He can do this. 

There’s a sudden, sharp snarl from behind him and Peter whips around. It’s too late for a warning, too late to call for help—one of the gigantic masses is already towering over him, effectively trapping Peter on the corner of the roof where he’d been perched. 

It’s a bad time for Peter to remember that they call it ‘nearsightedness’ for a reason. As the alien draws even closer, Peter is able to make out the sharp claws clutching at the rounded metal tube that they’ve been firing on them with, the triple rows of bloody teeth crowding its mouth. 

The tube comes up and strikes Peter’s head before he can make a choice between fight or flight, the momentum carrying him onto his bruised side. The pain feels bone-deep this time, like he’s just fallen all over again. 

He doesn’t manage to stifle his cry this time, his pained exclamation broadcast for the entire team to hear. 

“Peter?” Tony’s yelling his name before anyone else has a chance to react. _“Kid?”_

Peter drags himself away, gritting his teeth against the pain it causes. “I’m fine. Get the portal closed." KAREN, mute my comms for now.” He can’t afford to be a distraction for the team on top of everything else.

His moment of distraction has cost him, though. A tight grip latches onto his leg and pulls him backwards before slinging him through the air and throwing him back into the ground. 

Peter swears he hears something crack. His vision goes black for a second, and he screams loud enough that he thinks the others _must_ have heard him this time, even without his comms on. 

But no one comes to his rescue. The alien keeps approaching, obviously enjoying toying around with Peter before he kills him. KAREN is yelling in his ears, something about fractures and internal bleeding, but Peter doesn’t really hear her. 

The barrel of the metal tube points towards him. The alien has finished with his game. 

Peter has just enough time to realize that he’s about to die before he’s forcing his feet into motion, his months of training and patrols kicking his muted senses all into high-gear. 

He slams his hand into the barrel of the weapon just as it begins to heat, forcing the muzzle away from him and towards the creature. 

There’s a discharge followed by an inhuman shriek. The alien topples backwards and doesn’t move again. 

He stumbles backwards. He needs to sit—he needs to rest—he—

Peter picks out Tony’s voice among the general clamour of the comms. “Almost done, guys. I think I’ve just about got it.”

He turns around and fear floods him all over again. There’s Tony on the ground, head angled towards the body of the portal device. Less than ten feet away is an alien, the gun in its clawed hands pointing straight towards Tony’s unprotected back. 

“Mr. Stark!” Peter screams into the comms. “Behind you! There’s—”

He registers several things at one moment: one, they’re both too far for him to reach with his webs; two, his comms are off and no one else sees what’s happening; and three, Tony is going to die _right now_ if Peter doesn’t do anything to stop it. 

There’s no time to think, no time to even really decide. Peter just acts, throwing himself off of the side of the building and casting a web out wherever the hell he can get it to stick. 

It catches—thank god—and Peter’s flying instead of falling. The world seems to slow down as Peter nears, he registers the snap of the portal closing, the expletive-laced shout of triumph Tony lets out, and the gentle _whirr_ of the blaster being charged. 

His feet impact the alien’s head with a sickening sound, and his momentum carries him straight through the kick and onto the ground. 

Peter rolls from his back straight onto his feet. The alien copies his movement, rising sluggishly back onto whatever haunches it had been standing on. It raises the blaster once more, this time aimed at Peter’s chest—

Then a hole is blown straight through the beast’s body and it slumps to the ground. 

“Nice work, kid,” Tony says, his hand still raised and ready to blast the thing again if it moves. 

The breath leaves Peter all at once. He sways a little on his feet, the entire battle catching up to him all at once. “You said that last time too,” he remembers before his knees hit the ground again. 

“Pete? Hey—hey, kid. You alright?” Tony drops down in front of him, his hands grabbing Peter’s shoulders just fast enough to stop him from crumbling completely. “Peter? You gotta answer me, kid.”

His vision is swimming. “I… I need to tell you something. My—my powers, they’re gone. I—on patrol—they—a wizard, he—” He’s interrupted by a loud, body-wracking cough. Something wet slides down his chin and he moves to tug off his mask. 

“Hey, hey, hey—Woah there, hold on a second.” Tony grabs his arm, but freezes a second later, staring at Peter with something akin to horror. 

“What is it?” Peter asks, but it comes out all wet and wrong. 

“Cap! Nat! Somebody—we need the jet. _Now,”_ Tony yells.

Peter’s head feels so heavy suddenly. He lists forward until he’s propped up against Tony’s chest, his forehead resting on the man’s shoulder. “Taste blood.”

“You’re bleeding internally,” Tony explains patiently, his voice laced with something manic and terrified. ‘You’re coughing up blood—it’s soaking through your mask.”

“Oh.” The fingers Peter presses to his mouth come away soaked a deep red. His hand feels like it weighs about a million pounds just then. It drops into his lap as he slumps against Tony’s shoulder. 

_“Peter.”_ He wants to respond, but Tony’s just so far away. “Kid, I swear to God,” he says, and it comes out sounding more like a sob than anything. 

But then another set of strong hands is lifting him. There’s still yelling—it’s all around him, it might even _be_ him—but all of it is so indistinct as to not even be there. 

The next time he opens his eyes, his mask is off. The ground is vibrating underneath him and two steady hands are combing their way through his hair. 

“Tony?” he murmurs, looking far into the distance at what he assumes is Mr. Stark’s head. It’s Mr. Stark—it has to be. No one else is ever this gentle with Peter. 

“I’m here, kid.” 

Peter smiles, but even that is painful now too. “Shouldn’t have come. I can—can’t stick to things anymore.” Something wet dribbles from his chin when he turns his head and Peter wonders distantly if he’s drooling. “‘m not Spider-man.” 

“You’re always Spider-man, Peter.” One of the hands from Peter’s head brushes the wetness away from his chin. “We’re gonna get you all fixed up, you hear me? You just have to stay _awake.”_

“Okay,” Peter says because Tony sounds like he’s in agony, like the one thing that could make it all better is if Peter could just keep his eyes open. 

But the exhaustion is creeping into his bones now, into the bruises and broken bones that stubbornly refuse to heal. Some part of Peter’s mind has realized that this is all too much for him; he’s been defeated, all he has to do now is issue the final surrender. 

But Tony still thinks they’ve got time—Tony has no idea that Peter’s is running out before his eyes. 

He grabs Mr. Stark’s hand and squeezes it with all the strength that he has left. “I can’t heal. My powers—I can’t heal.” 

And Tony’s eyes go wide right then, because he realizes the same thing that Peter’s already accepted. “No. No.” He shakes his head. 

“I’m sorry,” Peter tells him before he drifts off. 

_“Peter. Kid, stay awake. Please. God, please, please—I can’t lose him.”_

Sounds echo, but Peter doesn’t have time to hear them before his eyes slip shut.

~

When Peter wakes up several hours later—after an impromptu visit from Doctor Strange and a gruelling 7-hour surgery, as he’ll learn later—his hand is being clasped tightly between someone else’s. 

There’s the steady beat of a heart sat right next to his bed and the low hum of the heart monitor Peter can feel attached to his chest. A laboured sigh fills the room. “Alright, Pete. You’ve been snoozing long enough—time to wake up now.”

Peter cracks his eyes open.

The first thing he sees is the look Tony sets aside specifically for Peter’s absolute worst screw ups, his mouth turned down into a grimace and his brow set in one hard line. “Nice of you to join us, kid.”

“How’d you know I was awake?” he asks, voice gravelly from sleep.

“Your face always twitches a little when you’re coming out of it.” Tony drops Peter’s hand with a tired sigh, leaning over the bed to grab something off of the bedside table. He tips a cup towards Peter’s lips. “Here. Just ice chips for now—I’ve been informed that you’ll be able to graduate back to liquids as soon as your insides stop bleeding all over the place.” 

Peter takes a few pieces and lets them melt on his tongue. “I don’t get it,” he says after a moment. “I thought I was…”

“A goner?” Tony’s face is pale, his expression drawn. “You gave it your best shot—I’ll give you credit, but nothing so bad that doctors Strange and Cho couldn’t fix it.” 

He almost chokes on an ice chunk. “Doctor Strange was here?”

“How’d you think we got your healing factor to work again?”

With a jolt, Peter realizes his vision’s been returned to its regular clarity. The relief hits him like a freight train. “You mean he undid everything? The spell?”

“All gone.”

He takes a deep breath. “I still feel kinda weird, though.”

“Weird how?” Tony asks. 

Peter flexes his fingers and toes. Everything is strange—distant, almost. “Weak.” 

“That’ll be the painkillers. We doped you up good enough to put down a horse—several, in fact.” 

Tony sets the cup back down on the table. His jaw moves like he’s debating something. “Peter, why the hell did you do that?”

He doesn’t ask Tony to specify what it is he’s talking about. “I—I just thought I could handle it.”

“You thought you could handle stepping into a superhero battle royale with literally none of your abilities in working order? Tell me how that checks out.”

“I made a mistake, okay?” 

Tony’s voice is like steel. “No. A mistake is when you forget to block a hit because you’re mouthing off. A mistake is when you run out of web-fluid in the middle of a battle. Getting hit on patrol and then _not telling me_ for a whole day when your powers disappear is not a mistake.” He appears to collect himself for a moment, physically reigning in the fury that’s seeping through the seams. “You asking to come on a mission with us despite full well knowing that you’d be flying in—literally—blind, injured, and powered down—that’s not a mistake. It didn’t happen by accident.” 

“I was going to tell you—”

Tony scoffs.

“No, I was—I swear,” Peter maintains, reaching out for his mentor’s arm. “I just, I wanted to prove that I could still be Spider-man, even without the abilities.” 

Tony sighs and covers his face. “You don’t have anything to prove to me, Peter.”

“Not to you, maybe, but to myself.” 

And Tony looks at him then, really takes in his expression, and maybe sees something he understands. A hunger, a drive to assert himself as more than just the mask. 

The fear written into his expression settles into something else—defeat, maybe pride. “I meant what I said on the jet. You’re Spider-man no matter what.” 

A smile creeps onto Peter’s face. “Thanks, Mr. Stark.”

“But, and I’m not jerking you around here, if you ever pull anything _—anything—_ like that again, I’ll save everyone the trouble and just kill you myself. You hear me?”

Peter leans back and closes his eyes. “I hear you.”

“Good.” A hand settles on the top of his head, methodically separating the curls that have clumped together. “You really freaked me out there, Pete.”

Peter knows that’s as close as Tony will get to admitting that he was scared. Terrified, even, if his shaky memories can be trusted. 

“I’m sorry.”

Mr. Stark heaves another sigh, this one sounding from deep in his chest. “I know. Go to sleep, kid.”

He murmurs a response, but it’s lost as he slides back into unconsciousness. He knows Tony will be there when he wakes up.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my attempt at dealing with my grief... yeah, I'm not over endgame yet jsyk.
> 
> my tumblr: https://memesichetta.tumblr.com/
> 
> marvel side-blog: https://shhhpider-man.tumblr.com/


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